Cutty Sark, the last surviving tea clipper in the world, closed yesterday for a £25m conservation project to secure the future of a ship which was once the fastest and arguably the most beautiful on the high seas.

Scientists have discovered a surprising way of improving memory: passing electricity through the brain while you are asleep. They have found that mild electrical stimulation at the right frequency improved people's ability to remember words on waking up.

Riots by ultra-Orthodox Jews in protest at a gay pride march scheduled to take place in Jerusalem later this week have led police to warn that the risk of violence is now too great to allow it to go ahead.

Africa could suffer greater effects from global warming than previously feared, the United Nations said yesterday, with the risk of widespread coastal flooding, substantial loss of animal habitat and lower cereal yields all likely in coming decades.

Bulent Ecevit, five times Turkish prime minister and a political force in Turkey for almost half a century who ordered the invasion of Cyprus and ushered his country towards the EU, died yesterday aged 81.

Leader: No European country now executes its criminals. If a new Iraq is to ever to emerge from the ruins of the old, eschewing judicial murder would be a good start. National reconciliation should matter more than sectarian retribution, however understandable the desire for it.

Obituary: A writer, literary critic and teacher, whose gusto for life was there in the peals of laughter which shook his wiry frame, in the enthusiasm so readily caught by his students and in the outpouring of work from his pen.